Category Archives: Mexican Drug Cartels

But now the world’s most powerful drug trafficker is taking one what is arguably the world’s most feared organization, ISIS.

Chapo’s anger toward the radical jihadist group does not stem from some sense of altruism for the victims of the recent attacks in Paris or San Bernardino, but instead from concerns about his bottom line after ISIS destroyed several of his Sinaloa Cartel’s drug shipments moving through the Middle East.

“You [ISIS] are not soldiers,” Guzmán purportedly wrote. “You are nothing but lowly p**. Your god cannot save you from the true terror that my men will levy at you if you continue to impact my operation.”

Guzmán added: “My men will destroy you. The world is not yours to dictate. I pity the next son of a whore that tries to interfere with the business of the Sinaloa Cartel. I will have their heart and tongue torn from them. It looks like it’s on.”

The Sinaloa Cartel is considered the world’s largest drug trafficking organization, with operations running throughout the Americas, Europe, Africa, Australia and Asia. In the Middle East, the cartel has become a major provider of cocaine, ecstasy and other so-called party drugs to oil-rich princes and businessmen throughout the region.

Islamic State fighters, however, abhor the use of drugs and have systemically been destroying any cartel shipments they get their hands on.

While the group is prolific on social media and in their video output, ISIS has so far not responded to the threats from Guzmán.

In his letter, Guzmán also hints that if he succeeds in destroying the terrorist group then he should be given immunity from prosecution. Guzmán made a highly-publicized escape earlier this year from a maximum security prison in Mexico, where he was awaiting trial on drug trafficking charges.

“It would be ironic that the group who ends up taking out ISIS is El Chapo’s drug cartel!” Guzmán reportedly wrote. “They seem up to the task and it could be worth giving immunity to this guy in exchange for him and his boys taking out ISIS once and for all!

Mexican Marines are nipping at the heels of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán’s – or at least that’s what the minister overseeing the Marines believes.

Since Oct. 6, thousands of soldiers have been sent to the area known as Mexico’s “Golden Triangle,” the remote, mountainous region where the states of Chihuahua, Durango and Sinaloa converge.

Most of them parachuted in.

The operation was reportedly triggered by information provided to Mexican authorities by U.S. drug agents who were monitoring cell phone activity.

Around 200 people from the region, presumably scared of getting caught in the crossfire between the Marines and the Sinaloa Cartel’s sicarios, have fled to the town of Cosalá.

“The Marines told us that they want to capture the Lord,” they told reporters, and mentioned talking about soldiers attacking civilians.

“People are frightened,” Cosalá’s representative in the state legislature, Lucero Sánchez López, told TV reporters, adding that at least eight people were missing.

The most interesting fact about Sánchez is that she has been identified by the Mexican press and the Attorney General’s office, as Chapo’s newest lover and the mother of his youngest child, an allegation she has consistently denied.

For its part, SEMAR says there haven’t been any civilian attacks, but it doesn’t deny that the Marines are carrying out an operation in that sector of Sinaloa and across the state line in Durango – a state that’s governed by Ricardo Ochoa, whose sister, Emma Coronel, happens to be Chapo’s current wife.

The presumed romantic relationship between the 57-year-old Guzmán – the world’s most wanted drug kingpin – and a 26-year-old, thick-lipped and light-haired member of the National Action Party (PAN) – has spread ever since June, when it was first reported that she visited Chapo in Altiplano prison, some 55 miles from Mexico City, in May when she was pregnant.

At the time, authorities at the prison lodged a complaint with PGR saying that Chapo received a visit from a woman who used a fake ID who was not his wife. For her part, Sánchez says that the woman photographed with the drug lord isn’t her.

The newspaper Excélsior, suggested that Sánchez first met Chapo in 2013, at a party in the Golden Triangle that both attended. A few months later, her former husband and the father of her two sons, Rubén Chavez, 27, was shot to death.

A few days after Chapo’s second escape from a Mexican high-security prison in July, the Attorney General’s office (PGR in its Spanish acronym) leaked to the media a statement by one of Guzmán Loera’s attorneys confirming that Sánchez visited his client to discuss details of where and how their child would be raised.

A veteran columnist from El Universal newspaper, Ricardo Alemán, wrote, “Very little is known for a fact about Chapo’s children … What we do know is that Chapo’s youngest kid is the son of Lucero Guadalupe Sánchez López, presently a deputy in the Sinaloa Congress from the 16th district of Cosalá.”

He added, “It is also known that Mrs. Sánchez became deputy in the state congress by virtue of Chapo’s influence in Cosalá.”

Sánchez continues to deny having a relationship with Chapo. At a session of the Sinaloa Congress in July, she said the topic was “ridiculous” and condemned the PGR’s “coarse leaks” and said she intended to “file a claim with the [Mexican] Human Rights Commission for defamation and moral injury to me, my children and the rest of my family.”

It isn’t known whether she has filed any claim or if she has been called into the PGR for questioning. Chapo’s wife, with whom the kingpin has twin daughters, has not made any public statement on the matter.

PAN leaders have stated that Sánchez will be removed from her post if it proves that she did, in fact, visit Chapo at Altiplano.

Whether or not Sánchez is involved with Chapo, few people doubt that he’s in the Golden Triangle. What’s less clear is that Mexico’s forces will be able to catch him a third time.

“There’s hardly any other place where he could feel more secure than the Golden Triangle, where he has not only friends but family and social protection,” analyst José Reveles, author of the Spanish-language book, “El Chapo: Surrender and Treason,” told Fox News Latino.

Mexican soldiers unload bundles of seized marijuana before incinerating the drugs at a military base in Tijuana, Mexico.

Latin American drug syndicates are sweeping into Asia, spurred by growing wealth, regional trade pacts that ease smuggling and some of the highest margins on offer.

Growth in the drugs trade, a significant part of an illicit economy worth more than $100 billion a year in east Asia alone, has led to a rapid rise in seizures: 254 million methamphetamine pills, for example, were intercepted in east and Southeast Asia in 2013 — a more than eight fold increase in just five years.

Officials warn that Asian law enforcement authorities are ill-equipped to cope with the rapid rise of drugs being smuggled across increasingly porous borders.

“Police and customs officials in Asia don’t often have connections in the Americas and have little knowledge of what may be coming their way,” said Jeremy Douglas, regional representative for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. “They don’t operate internationally. They’re about to have to.”

For those who are caught, the risks outweigh the rewards, with the death penalty operating for drugs offences in several Asian jurisdictions.

The Philippines, which has debated introducing the death sentence for drug offences, is the test bed for a pioneering case next month, when Mexican national Horatio Hernandez Herrera appears in court accused of being a high-ranking member of the notorious Sinaloa drugs cartel.

At a regional meeting in Bangkok last month, representatives of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations raised red flags, saying that despite the potential for economic growth and trade, the region’s rapidly increasing connectivity could leave borders vulnerable to transnational trafficking and smuggling.

“Strengthening skills, capacity and cross-border co-operation among border and port security agencies is therefore essential to counter rapidly evolving transnational crime challenges,” said Jakkrit Srivali, a top official with Thailand’s foreign affairs ministry.

Growing wealth in Asia has translated into heightened demand for cocaine, with emerging pockets of consumption, trafficking and trade, according to a report last year from the UN office.

Mexico’s infamous Sinaloa cartel, whose head Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán staged a sensational jailbreak last month, has been pinpointed as a key supplier by authorities across Asia-Pacific.

The Jalisco New Generation cartel, an aggressive newcomer to Mexico’s drug wars that achieved notoriety in recent months after shooting down a military helicopter, is also targeting markets in Hong Kong and Japan, according to Canacintra, a Mexican business chamber.

“The severe penalties, such as life imprisonment or even the death penalty, for traffickers caught in Asia are reflected in the exorbitant price of the drugs there,” organisation president Rodrigo Alpízar Vallejo told media in Mexico.

Asia-Pacific economies offer much higher profit margins than the cartel’s traditional markets. In Hong Kong, a kilogramme of cocaine can sell for up to three times the price it would in the US. In Australia, it can be as much as six times, according to police and experts.

Meanwhile, according to financial crime investigators, the cartels will be closely studying regional trade deals, such as the landmark Trans-Pacific Partnership, for clues about the liberalisation of certain routes or the reduction of tariffs on certain goods, which could be used to hide contraband and assist in the trade-based repatriation of smuggling profits.

“Anything that is going to increase the volume of trade, the efficacy of trade, is also going to increase the opportunity and bandwidth of criminals to move their products and launder funds,” said Bill Majcher, who worked with American and Canadian federal police.

“Over the past few decades I have seen a dramatic increase in trade-based laundering closely correlated with the opening up of transnational trade zones and treaties,” said another investigator, who asked to remain anonymous due to ongoing operations.

Robert Evan Ellis, professor of Latin American Studies at the US Army War College and an expert on the region’s relations with China, said the deal would “expand opportunities for transpacific organised crime by increasing trade volume, and the number of banks and companies doing transpacific transactions”.

However, he noted that regional ties fostered by the deal would “indirectly help increase law enforcement and transpacific legal frameworks that will help combat the cartels”.

A manhunt began immediately late Saturday for the head of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel, which has an international reach and is believed to control most of the major crossing points for drugs at the U.S. border with Mexico.

Associated Press journalists near the Altiplano said the roads were being heavily patrolled by Federal Police with numerous checkpoints and a Blackhawk helicopter flying overhead. Flights were also suspended at Toluca airport near the penitentiary in the state of Mexico, and civil aviation hangars were being searched.

Guzman was last seen about 9 p.m. Saturday in the shower area of his cell, according to a statement from the National Security Commission issued early Sunday. After a time, he was lost by the prison’s security camera surveillance network. Upon checking his cell, authorities found it empty and a 20-by-20-inch (50-by-50 centimeter) hole near the shower.

Guzman’s escape is a major embarrassment to the administration of President Enrique Pena Nieto, which had received plaudits for its aggressive approach to top drug lords. Since the government took office in late 2012, Mexican authorities have nabbed or killed six of them, including Guzman.

Guzman faces multiple federal drug trafficking indictments in the U.S. as well as Mexico, and was on the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s most-wanted list.

After Guzman was arrested on Feb. 22, 2014, the U.S. had said it would file an extradition request, though it’s not clear if that happened.

The Mexican government at the time vehemently denied the need to extradite Guzman, even as many expressed fears he would escape as he did in 2001 while serving a 20-year sentence in another maximum-security prison, Puente Grande, in the western state of Jalisco.

Former Mexican Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam told The AP earlier this year that the U.S. would get Guzman in “about 300 or 400 years” after he served time for all his crimes in Mexico. Murillo Karam said sending Guzman to the United States would save Mexico a lot of money, but keeping him was a question of national sovereignty.

He dismissed concerns that Guzman could escape a second time. That risk “does not exist,” Murillo Karam said.

It was difficult to believe that such an elaborate structure could have been built without the detection of authorities. According to Rubido, the tunnel terminated in a house under construction in a neighborhood near the prison. Guzman dropped by ladder into a hole 10 meters (yards) deep that connected with a tunnel about 1.7 meters (yards) high that was fully ventilated.

Guzman is known for the elaborate tunnels his cartel has built underneath the Mexico-U.S. border to transport cocaine, methamphetamines and marijuana, with ventilation, lighting and even railcars to easily move products.

He was first caught by authorities in Guatemala in 1993, extradited and sentenced to 20 years in prison on drug-trafficking related charges. The lore says he escaped in a laundry cart, although there have been several versions of how he got away. What is clear is that he had help from prison guards, who were prosecuted and convicted.

Guzman was finally re-captured in February 2014 after eluding authorities for days across his home state of Sinaloa, for which the cartel is named. He was listed as 56 years old last year, though there are discrepancies in his birth date.

During his first stint as a fugitive, Guzman transformed himself from a middling Mexican capo into arguably the most powerful drug trafficker in the world. His fortune grew to be estimated at more than $1 billion, according to Forbes magazine, which listed him among the “World’s Most Powerful People” and ranked him above the presidents of France and Venezuela.

Guzman has long been known for his ability to pay off local residents and even authorities, who would tip him off to security operations launched for his capture. He finally was tracked down to a modest beachside high-rise in the Pacific Coast resort city of Mazatlan on Feb. 22, 2014, where he had been hiding with his wife and twin daughters. He was taken in the early morning without a shot fired.

But before they reached him, security forces went on a several-day chase through Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state. They found houses where Guzman supposedly had been staying with steel-enforced doors and the same kind of lighted, ventilated tunnels that allowed him to escape from a bathroom to an outside drainage ditch.

Even with his 2014 capture, Guzman’s continues to stretch throughout North America and reaches as far away as Europe and Australia. The cartel has been heavily involved in the bloody drug war that has torn through parts of Mexico for the last decade, taking at least an estimated 100,000 lives.

Altiplano, which is considered the main and most secure of Mexico’s federal prisons, also houses Zetas drug cartel leader Miguel Angel Trevino, and Edgar Valdes Villarreal, known as “La Barbie,” of the Beltran Leyva cartel.

Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman has escaped after being imprisoned on February 22, 2014. I guess he just got tired of the same daily routine, and made a change!

Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman

MEXICO CITY – Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman has escaped from a maximum-security prison outside Mexico City, the government said Sunday, his second jail break in 14 years.

Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, pictured after his original recapture on February 22, 2014, has escaped from a maximum-security prison outside Mexico City, his second jail break in 14 years

The kingpin was last spotted by security cameras in the shower area of the Altiplano prison, 90 kilometers (55 miles) west of the capital, on Saturday night before disappearing, the National Security Commission said.

An alarm was issued after “he was not visible” for a while and “the escape of Guzman was confirmed,” the commission said in a statement.

“An operation to locate him was deployed in the area and on roads of neighboring states,” it said, adding that flights were suspended at the nearby Toluca airport.

His first escape from prison was in 2001, when he slipped past authorities by hiding in a laundry cart.

Marines finally recaptured Guzman in February 2014 in a pre-dawn raid in a condo in Mazatlan, a Pacific resort in Sinaloa state.

Guzman was considered the world’s most wanted drug lord, whose Sinaloa cartel shipped narcotics across the globe.

US authorities announced plans to seek the extradition of Mexico’s most powerful drug lord after his capture in a US-backed operation that included a drone, cellphone intercepts and elite Mexican marines.

As prosecutors in New York prepared their request, new details emerged Sunday from the manhunt that led to the capture of Sinaloa cartel boss Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, whose empire has smuggled drugs to the United States, Europe and Asia.

The US surveillance drone was used for two weeks between mid-January and mid-February to back up a massive operation in the northwestern city of Culiacan, a US government official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Guzman eventually slipped out of Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state, after escaping through tunnels under one of his safe houses as the marines closed in on him, Mexican and US officials said.

Under pressure, the 56-year-old drug capo, who had been on the run since escaping from prison 13 years ago, fled further south to the beach resort city of Mazatlan.

It was there that the elite marine unit captured him on Saturday, in the fourth floor of a condominium, with a surprisingly small entourage that included one lookout, one bodyguard and a woman believed to be his beauty-queen wife, the US official said.

Guzman went down without a single shot.

“Cellular telephone intercepts were involved in the arrest,” the official said.

The US Drug Enforcement Administration had provided intelligence information to the marines.

The US official said the remote-controlled aircraft was not used in Mazatlan, but it had been deployed in Culiacan to corroborate other intelligence and that Mexico’s military had authorized its use.

One of the world’s most wanted man, Guzman had been spending most of his time in the bustling city of Culiacan, living in houses with escape tunnels, extra thick walls and steel-reinforced doors, officials said.

“It’s a big city where he has his contacts, his women, his houses,” the US official said.

Officials had hoped that Guzman would flee to a rural, more open space to capture him, and his decision to run to Mazatlan around three days before his arrest was a surprise, the official said.

His arrest capped a months-long operation that resulted in the arrests of a dozen Sinaloa cartel operatives, including alleged bodyguards of Guzman’s top associate, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada.

Several cellphones were seized from the detainees and later used to establish wiretaps as part of the operation against the Sinaloa cartel, said an official from the Mexican attorney general’s office.

The official said authorities are still searching for Zambada, who is considered Guzman’s natural successor.

– US seeks extradition –

Nabbing Guzman, who is considered the world’s biggest drug trafficker, was a major victory in President Enrique Pena Nieto’s push to rein in drug violence in his country.

The Sinaloa cartel’s turf wars with rival gangs contributed to a wave of drug violence that left more than 77,000 people dead in the past seven years.

The United States had offered a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture, with several indictments in cities from New York to San Diego.

Robert Nardoza, a spokesman for the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, said prosecutors there “plan to seek his extradition.”

A senior Republican lawmaker called for Guzman’s extradition, warning that “the biggest fish ever” may try to flee again in a repeat of his legendary 2001 escape from prison in a laundry cart.

“I think that would be the best course for not only Mexico, but also the United States, in ensuring that what happened in 2001 does not happen again,” Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, told ABC television.

A Mexican foreign ministry spokesman declined to comment on the planned extradition request.

An official in the Mexican attorney general’s office said Guzman has to finish the 20-year sentence he avoided by fleeing eight years into his prison term.

But he is also facing new charges of drug trafficking, using illegal funds, organized crime and possession of weapons reserved for the military, the official said.

An alleged Colombian drug trafficker accused of having ties to the Mexican organization Joaquin ” El Chapo “Guzman, the leader of the Sinaloa cartel, appeared before a federal judge in Miami on Monday , but the hearing was held behind closed doors by order of the judge.

Colombian Drug trafficker associated with Joaquin ” El Chapo “Guzman,

Immediately after the hearing started with Dolly Cifuentes , Judge Joan Lenard ordered the audience leave the room. Only a few people were present, including the defendant, her attorney Bonnie Klapper, prosecutor Andrea Hoffman, one interpreter and several policemen.

According to court records contained in the online system of the federal courts, Cifuentes Villa was due to Lenard to change the declaration of innocence that had been made in August 2012.

In 2010, the U.S. government accused Cifuentes, dubbed the “minor” with conspiracy to import and manufacture cocaine knowing that it would be imported into the United States, and to manufacture and distribute cocaine in Guatemala and Colombia and to import these drugs into this country .

In total, the authorities made five charges that carry a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

However, due to an agreement between Colombia and the United States, Cifuentes cannot face a life sentence or death. At the hearings where the accused changed her initial statement of innocence to guilty, also typically announced a plea deal. Through these agreements undertake to cooperate with the authorities in ongoing investigations, in exchange for a lighter sentence and avoid a trial, a process that is usually longer.

Cifuentes, recently extradited more than a year from her country, would have been a brother’s girlfriend of former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe. After the hearing of nearly an hour, Klapper the defense attorney refused to comment outside the courtroom to. Lenard said the judge had ordered court documents remain secret. Cifuentes entered the courtroom minutes before Lenard request removal of those present.

She was dressed in a short sleeveless camisole and beige pants. Her face was pale. A woman who also left the room said it was the lawyer of Cifuentes in Colombia, who said that the defense of the accused had asked that the hearing be reserved. The woman, who spoke Spanish, was not to be identified by name.

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